Quotes about shallows
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“The child of God must be willing to be a channel through which God’s bounties flow, both with regard to temporal and spiritual things. This channel is narrow and shallow at first, it may be; yet there is room for some of the waters of God’s bounty to pass through. And if we cheerfully yield ourselves as channels, for this purpose, then the channel becomes wider and deeper, and the waters of the bounty of God can pass through more abundantly.”

George Müller (1805–1898) German-English clergyman

A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Third Part.
Third Part of Narrative

God, Water

“A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 70
Context: A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend. Commercial greed values the lives of men no more than it values the lives of ants. The slave-trade is as acceptable to a people enthralled by that greed, as the trade in ivory or spices, if the profits are as large.

Men, War

“My admittedly limited experience on the internet and with computer “information”, has revealed that this is a rather shallow sort of knowledge and impersonal sort of human connection. I think great books and real live human beings do a better job of making us wise, compassionate people.”

Katherine Paterson (1932) American children's writer born and mainly raised in China

People, Books, Knowledge, Thinking

“I have no time for shallow talk, pointless interactions, fake smiles, and meaningless friendships.”

Ralph Smart

Source: yt

Friendship, Smile, Time

“As a writer, my primary responsibility to readers is to write a story that is entertaining, and authentic. I wanted to write about characters who felt true to life, while also providing a way for readers to laugh at the foibles of others. Some of my characters are foolish, some are wise and kind, others are shallow and misguided. That’s how regular people behave too, and in fact we all cycle between many different ways of being…”

Uzma Jalaluddin (1980)

On writing characters in “Interviews with authors at EMWF: Uzma Jalaluddin” https://theontarion.com/2018/09/13/interviews-with-authors-at-emwf-uzma-jalaluddin/ in The Ontarion (2018 Sep 13)

Life, People, Way

“To immerse oneself in popular culture for any length of time is to wallow in an almost unbearable shallowness.”

Douglas Murray (1979) British political commentator and far-right activist

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Time

“Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope, yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the understanding of a child.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 1, Theosophy and the Masters

Understanding, Knowledge, Parting

“Right thought is necessary to right conduct, right understanding to right living, and the Divine Wisdom – whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name of Brahma Vidyā, or its modern Greek name of Theosophia, Theosophy – comes to the world as at once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing religion and ethic. It was once said of the Christian Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows in which a child could wade and depths in which a giant must swim. A similar statement might be made of Theosophy, for some of its teachings are so simple and so practical that any person of average intelligence can understand and follow them, while others are so lofty, so profound, that the ablest strains his intellect to contain them and sinks exhausted in the effort.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

Wisdom, World, Religion, Intelligence

“Pascal’s Wager never appealed to me. It seems logically…shallow.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

“Perhaps because it posits only two choices,” said Aenea. Somewhere in the desert night, an owl made a short, sharp sound. “Spiritual resurrection and immortality or death and damnation,” she said.
“Those last two aren’t the same thing,” I said.
“No, but perhaps to someone like Blaise Pascal they were. Someone terrified of ‘the eternal silence of these infinite spaces.’”
“A spiritual agoraphobic,” I said.
Aenea laughed. The sound was so sincere and spontaneous that I could not help loving it. Her.
“Religion seems to have always offered that false duality,” she said, setting her cup of tea on a flat stone. “The silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.”
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

“An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind.”

Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975) German businessman

William Shirer, a CBS journalist

“Every man creates his own private hell,… Brutal men believe they may challenge the mighty, and when they fall, they become embittered or befriend a shallow grave.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020), p. 138

Men, Hell

“It seems a shallow observation, but… the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?”

Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian

The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, October 1998 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 30 May 2006)

People

“Rigid distinctions between the deep and the shallow are generally themselves quite superficial.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 5, “Food , Book Reviews, Sports, Obituaries” Introduction (p. 169)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

“Modern Philosophers, that wisely keep to sandy shallows, like shrimps, for fear of bigger fish.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Vol. II, Ch. V Aphorisms and Extracts, p. 76.
Memoirs and Correspondence (1900)

Fear, Fish

“To demonize all Soviet "leaders" at all levels, to portray them as unqualified villains and evildoers, unprincipled self-seeking scoundrels who were indifferent to the interests and needs of the people — that is a shallow and frivolous approach. Of course there were villains, quite a few of them. But most of those who came to power had the intention of serving the "toiling masses" from which they themselves had come. That the system rendered their aspirations useless, reduced their efforts to nothing, and ultimately snuffed out their finer impulses — that is a separate question.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

People, Question, Effort, Self-confidence

“I may be shallow, but my thoughts are deep.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“Silence is deep as Eternity, Speech is shallow as Time.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Silence, Time, Deep

“Too much gravity argues a shallow mind.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 183
Aphorisms on Man (1788)

“[P]rivate spirits are too giddy to rest upon Scripture, and too heady and shallow to be acquainted with demonstrative arguments.”

William Laud (1573–1645) Archbishop of Canterbury

Source: A Relation of the Conference betweene William Lawd...and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (1639), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume II: Conference with Fisher (1849), p. 272